


The Devil

by SerpentsKiss



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, First Time, Tarot Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-23 19:52:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1577480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SerpentsKiss/pseuds/SerpentsKiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha and Steve move from feeling safe with each other to something more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil

When she first comes back to him, they both know it's to sleep. Not together, not sex – just in safety, in a place where she knows she doesn't have to have one eye open or her head craned back over her shoulder. She stays a few days, stealing his boxers and undershirts after he showers (“Hey, are these Iron Man boxers? – Steve, you're kidding. Tell me you're kidding.” – she wore them), flipping through his channels, and bringing him coffee in bed because she was always up earlier than he was.

That's what he misses most when she goes again. Not because he's too lazy to get up and get his own coffee, but because she'd sit on the bed beside him, on top of the covers, and they would just chat. Sometimes they would talk about really awful, painful things over the steaming coffee, and the awfulness had fallen away in the light of morning and the soothing colors of Steve's bedroom and the ridiculousness of Natasha sitting next to him and chatting amiably about people dying and how it never quite leaves you and wearing his boxers.

When she comes back a few weeks later, he wakes up to the smell of coffee. She laughs when she sees him sit up in bed, padding in barefoot and her hair tousled from (apparently) crashing on his couch while he was asleep. “No, don't get up,” she says and takes her now-familiar place beside him. “Old people shouldn't move too fast in the morning. You might have a heart attack.” She smiles at him, cutting all of the sting out of her words, and punches him lightly in the arm as she settles back against the headboard. He yelps as his coffee sloshes and for a moment, it seems like the whole world has settled back to its usual axis, like nothing is wrong, and like they're both normal, everyday people with jobs to go to and families to call on birthdays and holidays and neighbors to resent for silly things like loud music.

The illusion stays when their coffee is finished. They haven't talked much, this morning, just sat in companionable silence and slowly tilted toward each other. Their shoulders are touching now, their heads slightly inclined toward each other, and it seems perfectly natural for him to set down his empty cup and wrap his arm around her shoulders.

For a moment he's afraid she'll say something, thinks maybe he did the wrong thing (he doesn't mean it like that, she's his friend and he appreciates her, respects her), that she'll take it the wrong way... but she just sets down her own mug and squirms closer, until she's tucked comfortably against his side. “Pretty spry for a fossil,” she says, and they both laugh, and the world stays aligned and peaceful.

She showers first; it's the unspoken agreement and it suits them both. He usually makes breakfast at this point, then they eat together and he showers and they both do whatever they need to do. This time, though, when she extricates herself from him and gets up, she looks over at him. “You're coming with me,” she says.

For a second, Steve doesn't know what to say. Then all that escapes is, “-- Nat --” helplessly, and a bit baffled. She smiles at him, coy and reassuring at the same time, and leans over the bed to stretch out an arm to where he is in the middle and touch his hand.

“We're not having sex, Captain. Not yet. Now come on.” Then she turns away and strips the shirt off over her head, leaving it on the floor just outside the bathroom door.

Stunned, he follows. It takes a minute, and she's already in the steaming water when he steps into the bathroom. He hasn't so much as taken off his shirt, and she seems to know it without looking at him. “Naked,” she says, her voice wry and full of humor, knowing that she knows him and pleased by it. This eases him, and he laughs, and joins her with only a faint blush on his cheeks as he slides the shower door shut behind him.

He really doesn't expect her to turn to him with the soap, a calculating look in her eye, and begin methodically to wash him. Thoroughly, and from head to toe, completely unabashedly rubbing soap into the fine hairs dusting his scrotum and even past, further between his legs. He's completely red (and not just from the heat of the water, though she does like it almost unbearably hot) by the time she finishes and lets him rinse off. Then she passes the soap to him, raises her eyebrow in a challenge that he knows is as playful as it is serious, and says, “Well?”

It's easy enough to wash her back, then under her arms. Her front is a little more awkward, but he manages it even though he can feel her nipples against his palms as though they're tiny little hot coals calling his attention to them. He's doing no better when he kneels to wash her legs, and he barely manages not to look up at her in question before he slides a hand between them. She leans obligingly on the wall and sets her foot up on the other side of the tub to make it easy for him, and he has to blush and look away even as his fingers travel stubbornly onward, slick with soap as he cups his hand between her legs and then cautiously runs them between the sensitive folds of skin.

He does it quickly, painfully shy, but he's pretty sure that there's a slickness there that isn't just the suds. He's pretty sure that he's survived, that he's off the hook, but when she's done rinsing she points at the floor and orders him down in that same dispassionate tone and then he's face to face with her –

They're really lovely. Small, pert handfuls. He knows for a fact that they're perfect handfuls, because they were just in his hands a minute ago and – yes, he's glad the water is hot, because he's blushing perpetually. He focuses on the scar of the gunshot wound instead, that and the feel of her fingers working shampoo into his scalp. That feels truly lovely, and he begins to relax, finally. So much so that when she's done and she tells him to rinse off he leans forward impulsively to press his lips to that old area of damaged, whitened flesh.

It's her turn to be surprised, and she stiffens slightly, then rinses her hands in the water and slides to the floor of the shower with him and takes him in her arms.

The feel of her bare chest against his own isn't remotely sexual. It's a relief, actually. A release of pent up pain that seems to cloud slowly upwards with the steam and out of him. His arms slide around her in return and they hold each other there, the suds from his hair dripping slowly down into hers. He closes his eyes tightly so the soap doesn't drip down into them as well, and that makes it even better. Just – sitting here. Holding each other. Being okay, and her voice coincides with his thought as she murmurs, “You're okay, Steve. You're okay. We're both okay.”

It's easier after that. They finish their shower in the same companionable silence that they drink their coffee in, their morning routine changed, but not disrupted. She helps him make breakfast this time, razzing him remorselessly when he loses a piece of shell in the eggs and nudging him out of the way with her hip to “stop messing everything up and pour some orange juice before you burn the place down.”

They spend the day together, not separate but in the same space like they usually do. Neither goes out for an errand or to work out. They eat their meals together, look up to see the other glancing over with a smile that is warmly and readily returned. They've found some kind of understanding, here – that they expect honesty from each other, emotional nakedness... and that they can be safe with the physical nakedness as well.

When the sun goes down that night, they're both still up, laughing over some terrible old superhero movie playing on some obscure channel that only someone with Stark's TV hookup could have. When he goes to bed she joins him, and they leave clothes behind this time. Not sex, not yet... but intimacy. Soft, slow kisses and shy caresses that leave them both warm and satisfied, both well contented within their individual boundaries. Eventually they fall asleep, Steve sprawled out on his back with Nat curled into a half moon with her back to him. His arm is around her, though, and her hand is laid over his so that their fingers are just barely laced, sliding through the open spaces between his but not gripping tight.

That's what they do, Steve will realize in the weeks that follow. They find the empty spaces for each other and slide gently into them, filling up the loneliness and the pain and the memories and the mistakes. The coffee, the laughter, the movies, the research, the sleep... the trust grows, so that finally when Nat settles herself atop his hips and fits him to her, they're both ready for it, and content with not only the intimacy and each other, but with the relationship that they've both quietly built there in the small apartment. It's nothing world-shattering, but it's world-shaping, and both of their worlds are fuller and better for it.


End file.
